


Another Sort of Real

by TeddyLaCroix (ReadyPlayerZero)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, mention of other Avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:12:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/pseuds/TeddyLaCroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired of having nothing to do between missions and attacks, Steve Rogers becomes a fifth grade teacher for the Manhattan School District 114.</p><p>One of Steve's students brings him a message from home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Sort of Real

Steve was grading papers after classes when he heard the knock.

"Come in," he called as he glanced at the clock. It was half an hour past the end of the day and most of the students were long gone, but even so, he was unsurprised when he looked up to see the face of one of his students peeking through the partially open doorway. Many the kids had parents who couldn't pick them up right after school and didn't agree with the bus system, so it wasn't uncommon for some of them to come linger with him once in a while—the ones who weren't hung up on how "uncool" it was to hang out with their teacher, anyway.

Smiling, he set down his pen and sat back. "Hey, Levi," he greeted Levi Mackaness, the newest addition to classroom C4. The painfully shy boy had been with them for about two months now, and Steve knew from past visits that his parents had split up just before his transfer in. It made him ache to think of how many of the kids came from broken-up families, but the divorce statistics had also given him a strange—perhaps even a slightly twisted—sort of optimism.

It meant that people had the independence to seek out happiness rather than stay in bad situations for fear of stigma or lack of a way out.

It didn't forgive the couples who didn't stay and _try_ to fix their problems, of course. But it sure as hell was better than suffering at the hands of an abusive partner, or watching your children suffer at the same. While his father had never struck him and most of his memories of Joseph Rogers were very positive, by the end, his alcoholism _had_ started to scare him.

Levi entered the room and closed the door behind him. He shuffled up to the desk and stuck a hand in his backpack before pulling out a lavender-coloured envelope. He hesitated for just a moment before holding it out.

"Is this for me?" Steve asked curiously as he took the envelope.

Levi worried at the corner of his lip, staring down at a stack of Post-It Notes sitting on the desk. Taking a deep breath, he nodded. "It's from Jada."

Steve's gaze flicked from the envelope back up to Levi. He knew Jada was Levi's little sister—a second-grader, was she? Or third?—and she was home sick more often than not with a severe form of anemia that routinely left her fatigued. While Levi could never remember the name of her particular condition, his past descriptions of her symptoms and what sort of treatments she'd already undergone in her short life had led to Steve's (or rather, JARVIS's) suspicions that she suffered from something called thalassemia. He'd meant to ask Bruce about it, but hadn't gotten him alone for a conversation yet since Levi'd joined the class. In the meantime, he'd drawn a little sketch of Jada in a Superman-esque hero outfit based on a photo Levi'd shown him the last time they were talking after school, and Levi'd been beside himself with excitement.

"Go ahead and sit down," he suggested to Levi as he absently pushed the candy bowl he kept on his desk over. A couple of the teachers had questioned his decision in having sugar available to the kids, but he always maintained that children deserved to be children and have some fun, and a bite-sized Snickers once in a blue moon wasn't going to hurt them.

Levi sat, and Steve turned the envelope over. There was a Dora the Explorer sticker on the back that made him smile; Hulk seemed to have a peculiar fondness for that show, a fact that made Bruce cringe whenever it was mentioned.

Careful not to damage the sticker, he peeled it off slowly before pulling out the card tucked inside. He blinked to find an illustration of a big ginger tabby in a top hat and a cane hugging onto a smaller kitten in a dress; _HAPPY FATHER'S DAY_ was scrawled across the top in a common typeface he recognized as Scriptina.

As it was nowhere near father's day and he was most certainly nobody's father—even if he felt like it sometimes when Tony and Clint started bickering—he was more than a little confused. He glanced up at Levi again, but the quiet boy was sucking on a caramel apple pop as he flipped through an Iron Man comic book—something Tony had deliberately purchased and left there when he learned that kids liked to visit Steve's office sometimes.

He opened up the card, then sucked in a breath.

Jada's penmanship was not the best, so it took a moment to decipher the message scrawled unevenly on the left side of the card. The drawing on the right, however little-kid-ish it happened to be, was unmistakeable: a little girl sitting in a bed, smiling, holding hands with a little boy to one side of her and a taller man on the other side. The little boy had Levi's fuzzy mop of brown hair and the red sketchbook he always carted around held to his chest; the man had blond hair and blue eyes.

The message read:

_HI MR ROGERSSON,_  
I'm JADA and I'm 7. I reilly likd the drawing you gave me. Mommy put it in a picchure frame and its by my bed now and she sayd to tell you thank you so THANK YOU!!  
Im going to be in 5th grade in 3 yeers and I want to be in yor class becase LEVI seid your a good teachr so pleese pleese pleese keep teaching, ok.  
I ♥ you!  
And pleese give Levi lots of home work becaze hes a butthead.  
JADA Mackness 


The writing (in glittery orange ink, which didn't help the legibility) got smaller and smaller the further down it went, and her name was written sideways along the fold due to the lack of space at the bottom. It was smudged in several places from where she'd clearly dragged her hand over the words before it finished drying. The heart was written in a red pen with a pink outline. There was a smiley face to one side that looked kind of like Batman's Joker.

It was a little much, in the way that children tended to be a little much. He'd never even met Jada, and by all rights should have been a little apprehensive about what sort of tales Levi was telling her. But Steve couldn't remember the last time he'd been given a card, aside from the fan-mail "Captain America" sometimes got (but those were just kids writing to a faceless hero they saw on TV anyway). And now this poor, sick little girl who didn't even know him aside from Levi's stories was telling him "I love you" and wanting to be in his class even though it was only his first year teaching and he still felt like he didn't know what he was doing half the time...

He could remember what it was like to be so sick he was bedridden day in and day out. He could remember the struggle to get deep enough breaths, and the frustration of not having his strength cooperating with what his mind was convinced he could do. He'd always been told he had a good attitude about it all, since he never let his failing body stop him for too long, but he didn't think he'd ever managed the pure, innocent, confident _cheer_ Jada was expressing. He'd fought to look ahead do the end of the latest bout of illness, wondering how much longer his body would hold up—and here Jada was, only seven but already planning for three years down the line.

Kids these days. He wasn't sure if they were growing up too quickly or being spoiled for too long, but they were certainly something magical.

"Mr. Rogersson...?" Levi asked, sounding hesitant.

Flinching at the voice breaking through his thoughts, Steve looked up at his student again. "Oh—sorry, I think I just... yes?"

Levi furrowed his brow in clear concern and edged closer. "Are you okay? 'Cause if Jada said something stupid in there, 'cause you kind of looked like you were gonna cry for a second..."

Steve laughed quietly and turned his head away to collect himself. "I'm fine, Levi, thank you," he replied a moment later, tracing the edge of the card with one finger. "Your sister is very sweet. Please tell her thank you for me," he added, "and that I look forward to seeing her."

Levi tilted his head, and Steve thought, _Oh._ Of course Jada wouldn't have let him read the letter in advance. He'd never had a sibling himself, but there had still been notes and drawings he'd hidden from Bucky, knowing his friend would have teased him mercilessly for being sentimental. Why wouldn't Jada and Levi be the same way?

"Can I tell her you said not to call me a butthead, too?" Levi asked, wide-eyed and hopeful. "'Cause I hate it when she does that."

... All right, maybe not.

"Sure," Steve replied as he smiled at the boy, bemused by the insult—it was _definitely_ after his time—but amused by it all the same. "And thank you for playing messenger for us... but do try refrain from spinning too many tales about me. I'd hate to disappoint her when she reaches my class."

At that, Levi offered him a rare small smile. "You won't," he asserted with quiet certainty.

Steve was touched. He wasn't sure what on earth he'd done in the last two months to earn such a vote of confidence aside from keep an open door, but he was touched all the same. Despite all of the crazy things he'd seen and done since waking up 2011, this was the thing that left him feeling speechless. To be handed the faith of a lonely child was more humbling than meeting gods and more frightening than fighting aliens.

" _So light 'em up, up, up! Light 'em up, up, up! Light 'em up, up, up! I'm on—_ "

Steve resisted flinching this time and watched curiously as Levi fished around his bag for his phone (grade schoolers had cellphones?). Turning it on, he pressed it to his ear.

"Hi.—Uh-huh.—Yeah, sorry, I guess. I'm with Mr. Rogersson.—Yup, I did.—Okay. Bye."

Silently deeming that the shortest phone conversation ever before realising he'd _had_ shorter ones with Pepper ("Hi, could you please make Tony answer his phone? Thanks, bye!"), Steve arched an eyebrow. "Your mom?"

"Yeah, she's outside," Levi nodded before popping the candy bag in his mouth while he shouldered his bag. "See you tomorrow."

"You, too. Good-night, Levi."

Steve waited for Levi to be gone and the door to be shut again before he looked down at the card once more. Re-reading it, he let out a slow breath and let his eyes fall shut.

He sometimes wondered if he'd really done the right thing by getting a civilian job. It wasn't as though evil was popping up every week, so he had far, _far_ more downtime than time spent in combat or on a mission; therefore, _logically_ , it made sense to have a job. Still, he always carried a sense of guilt that it meant not being ready at a minute's notice to fight, just as he always knew something might happen to pull him permanently out of teaching any day.

Times like this made him realize how very much it _was_ the right thing. Interactions like this that he never would have experienced if he'd let himself stay tucked away in S.H.I.E.L.D., or training at the Mansion day in and day out with other superheroes. Seeing how families had changed, children had changed, _life_ had changed since he himself was a civilian. It was difficult to know what country or planet he was fighting for if he couldn't be out there living like everyone else did, experiencing what they did, getting to know the general public.

Nothing about this job, this "Mr. Rogersson the fifth grade teacher" persona, was technically real. There was no Steven Joseph Rogersson born in 1988, or if there was, it wasn't him. But at the same time, the day-to-day familiarity of it was more real than being "Captain America, leader of the Avengers" whenever Loki or the next Upcoming Villain or Somebody's Arch-Nemesis popped up. It was probably about on par with being "Steve Rogers, kicking it at home, tossing popcorn at bad movies with the gang."

Turning in his chair, he reached into one of his desk drawers and sifted through some empty picture frames for the right size. He'd brought several in because it seemed like the thing to do—put up photos of your loved ones on your desk, like all the other teachers did—before realizing that he _couldn't_. The identities of too many of his loved ones were still meant to be hush-hush, despite popping up in the news from time to time. Besides, if he had up photos of him and Tony working on cars, or Thor eating a plate of Pop-Tarts for breakfast, or Natasha and Clint snickering over past missions, or Bruce and Tony working in the lab, it was only a matter of time before someone realized the one person missing from the pictures was the one whose physical description matched his own.

He carefully tore the card down along the seam, then selected two frames. Popping open the backs, he slipped each half of the card in one of the frames so that Jada's message and drawing faced out. Setting them on his desk, he adjusted them carefully until the angles felt right. Leaning back, he eyed them in satisfaction and nodded.

When he picked up his pen again and resumed grading homework, it was with a smile in his eyes, a hum on his lips, and a refreshing new peace in his heart.


End file.
